It may sound unbelievable, but ants are probably smarter than you

I have spent a good part of my life trying to appreciate the beauty of animals and how they’ve meticulously planned their lives.

You might think it is impossible for ants to outsmart you, but wisdom taught me that there is a high dimension of life hacks that some seemingly unimportant creatures have adopted which have made their lives.

Whether it is red ants, fire ants, carpenter ants, weaver ants or any of the 14,000 species of ants, ants remain those tiny creatures we’ve all known over the years that can make your skin sore when bitten. And trust me, they’re way smarter than a whole lot of humans.

1. They’ve got the “sixth sense”

I know you might have seen a lot of Hollywood animated movies on talking ants with globe-like eyes. Well, the truth is that most ants are blind. But they’ve got the sixth sense.

Not technically the “sixth sense” per se, but they have a heightened sense of smell, and antennae that helps them to feel things around them.

Without an intelligent sense of sight, these tiny creatures have well mastered their terrains and can detect food, obstacles and enemies on the way.

If you have keenly observed the red ants, you’ll notice they walk across a defined pathway without missing their ways. This is achieved using their antennae.

Most humans who are vision impaired or who have one form of disability or the other have settled for begging or worse still, feel they can never amount to anything tangible in life.

But these tiny creatures keep teaching us that even though the creator made them vision impaired, they still have lots of smart ways to get things done.

The secret is to find a way even in the most difficult of times. If you keep seeing you insufficiency and disability, surely, you can never get any result.

2. They are hyper-organized

An entire ant colony starts with a single reproductive female ant known as the queen. Through her, other members of the colony including the female workers and soldiers are born. The most remarkable thing about the organization of ants is that no one tells the other what to do.

There is no central control department that dishes orders. And like you’ve known, they don’t have functional eyes. But these guys achieve great results without having supervisors over them.

They know what to do and when to do it. Procrastination doesn’t exist in their lexicon and their efficiency is thought provoking. Call it stereotyped, but you cannot deny that their system is totally organized.

Being smart entails using minimum resources to get best results while avoiding every form of loss whatsoever. If you need someone to Wait on you before you take important actions in your life, then you are certainly not as smart as an ant.

Ants are literally the best time managers and they don’t waste resources. Once an opportunity for food opens up somewhere, the scouts will smell it and go for inspection. When they return with tangible intelligence, the necessary number of ants that are needed to move the food will immediately leave to pick it up.

For them, complacency and negligence is a crime.

3. They’re united.

Apart from being organized, it is also indisputable that they are totally united. And whenever unity is discussed, tolerance is given a seat at the high table.

One of the problem of humans and our relationships is that we lack unity. We find it difficult to accept the flaws of others and work together for a collective cause.

Try and picture ants lifting a pinch of sugar. The dedication and harmony at which it is done makes them look as though they are some sort of higher animals.

If you’re not a team player, if you’re self-centered and if you can’t coexist with others without bickering and fist fights, then you still have an unfinished course to learn from ants.

4. They make timely investment

At the beginning of spring, ants gather food to store away before the raining days come. Even those in arid areas also engage in proper foraging.

These guys work as hard as bees knowing quite well that their survival in winter is hinged on the investments they make in spring and summer.

More dramatically, when they smell food in any nearby location, ants from a particular colony immediately go scouting. This is because, if they don’t go on time, ants from other colonies will go for it.

They understand the principles of early rising, not necessarily because they were created that way, but because they know that their survival is dependent on such habits.

The question now is, how many investments have you made since the beginning of this year? Investment may not necessarily be on shares or financial markets. It could also be investments on your human capital.

How often do you improve yourself? Your worth is totally dependent on your knowledge base. You cannot receive more than you can offer. If you’ve not realised and started working in the light of this reality, then you’re obviously not smarter than an ant.

5. They watch each other’s back

Sometime last year, I sat by my balcony watching about 3 wounded ants struggling. After a couple of minutes, other ants arrived the scene at different time intervals. Each of them immediately carried a wounded ant.

I guess one of them was dead already, but I couldn’t have been very sure though. That notwithstanding, two ants lifted it up.

I regret not capturing that scenario in a video. Although I’ve always known that every organism watches after its kind, but seeing the manner of care exhibited by ants, I was immediately convinced that humans don’t do enough.

It’s practically awful that in this present dispensation, instead of administering help to those in need, we are more keen at taking snapshots, video recordings and writing hot gossips on blogs about situations we had the power to salvage.

Ants know that they need each other to survive. I won’t be surprised if the U.S. Army learnt this little secret from them.

Selfishness kills. It leaves you alone in an empty world. Irrespective of the millions of dollars you have to flaunts, if you don’t have credible friends and family to share with, you’re not better than the beggar on the street.

6. They’re bloody innovative

The human brain is so sophisticated that it can solve the most difficult of problems. The human brain can hold 5 times as much information as a complete volume of Encyclopedia Britannica. Scientists argues that the brain has a memory ranging from 3 to 1000 terabytes. On the other hand, ants are considered primitive and have cognitive abilities that are nowhere close to that of man.

Yet, it baffles me how these tiny beings are able to build highly sophisticated anthills with diverse compartments that can house their colonies.

The most amazing part of it is that such anthills have no architectural plan, neither are they built using cement and blocks. Rather, they are comprised of just sand and moisture.

You still don’t get my point, do you? Okay, I’ll drop it.

If ants can think of something so advanced for their size, then where is your creative and innovative prowess? Why is it difficult to most people to make a tangible change in their society by simply engaging in something productive?

A whole lot of people are so domiciled in their comfort zones that they feel success is a mirage.

If an ant with a lifespan of about 90days knows how to get its butt off the couch and shape its life according to its desire, then why can’t you?

Being smart is way beyond looking smart. It’s about how you engage life and produce results in diverse situations. If ants can do any of the above better than you, then you must accept the fact that you’re not smarter than them.